Radek Pietruszka/PAP

Unemployment was so bad under Donald Tusk, the current opposition leader but also a former prime minister, that even he went to work abroad, Poland’s prime minister said on Friday.

Mateusz Morawiecki made the statement on X (formerly Twitter) the day after a court ruled against his ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party over claims that unemployment under the Tusk government reached 15 percent.

“Under Tusk there was such unemployment that even Tusk himself went to work abroad,” Morawiecki tweeted in an apparent reference to Tusk becoming president of the European Council in Brussels.

Tusk served as Poland’s prime minister between 2007 and 2014, after which headed the EU Council until 2019. Following his tenure as the Council’s head he became leader of the European People’s Party faction within the European Parliament until 2022 when he returned to domestic politics.

PiS launched a national ‘Tusk means unemployment’ campaign on Friday, emphasising that during his time in office the jobless rate exceeded 14 percent. According to the Central Statistical Office on Thursday, Poland’s unemployment rate stood at 5 percent in July.

Following Thursday’s court ruling about PiS’s unemployment claims about Tusk, made in an online campaign video ahead of a general election scheduled for October 15, Tusk tweeted: “They started the campaign with lies and then they lost in court. They will lie to the very end. And then stand before a court.”